


Situations

by extremiss



Category: Young Justice, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extremiss/pseuds/extremiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the scarab somehow doubles as a messed up and ever-violent love guru.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Situations

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not really an author or anything but i'm having these bluepulse withdrawals???///??/ and i'm not an artist either so here is how i cope. enjoy, i guess? ;u;
> 
> PS: I WASN'T SURE WHETHER TO PUT BART'S EYES AS GREEN OR GOLD but i went with green i'm sorry yolo

 

            Bart leans side to side, along with his controller, as if it could help him win the racing game. (Hint: it doesn't help at all.) The thing is, he _can't_ lose the damn racing game because well, racing is _his_ thing. It's a Bart thing. An Impulse thing.

            He's pressing buttons too fast and is busy driving his virtual car into a fence. That's when Jaime wins. Bart groans. Tosses his controller away, and reaches for a bag of chips on Jaime's lap. "This game sucks. Retro, but sucks."

            Jaime laughs. The game camera pans over to Bart's wrecked vehicle. "Really? Because you were looking very **_crash_** , hermano."

            "Best two out of three, her-ma-no." Bart replies, mockingly. "Your good luck can't stay around for a second time. Yeah?"

            The younger gives him a playful grin, and Jaime grins back. "Sure."

 

 

 

 

            The sun starts to set, which means it's time for Bart to go. Jaime takes him to the front door, and the short trip there from the stairs consisted of—what else?—Bart's sped-up chatter. Jaime reaches for the knob, and so does Bart, _painfully_ on-cue. Their fingers brush for a moment. Bart doesn't seem to mind. Jaime apparently does. He retracts his hands quickly, like he'd been burnt, and he sputters. "S-So, uh, see you tomorrow?"

            Jaime _more_ than appreciates how Bart's emerald eyes still seem bright in the almost-darkness. Bart smiles—the type of smile Jaime both hates and loves, just because it was coming from Bart—and nods. "See you tomorrow, ese."

            _The Impulse is causing you to have an abnormally fast heartbeat. He could be plotting your death._ Jaime hears the scarab say. _Suggested action: termination._

            "No." He firmly whispers to the scarab.

            "What?" Bart asks.

            Jaime forces a smile. "No, nothing." _He is not trying to kill me, alright? He's my friend,_ Jaime thinks to the scarab.

            Bart shrugs and then says something—Jaime thinks it was something along the lines of 'okaythenseeyabye'; he could be wrong—before speeding off. He's out of sight finally. Jaime sighs in relief, like he'd been holding his breath the entire time.

            _He does not seem like he is a friend to you._

"What do you mean?" asks Jaime, exasperated.

            _You do not think of Bart Allen as a friend._

"Of course I do, dude." Another sigh. "I just don't get you sometimes."

 

\----

 

            _The Impulse is a threat._

            "No he's not!" Blue Beetles bursts out. Teams Alpha, Zeta and Gamma pause to look at him, and Nightwing, who was in charge of briefing, stops as well. Blue Beetle sheepishly smiles. "Sorry. Please continue."

            Impulse is next to him at the moment. (Speak of the devil.) He's looking intently at the holograms, although he's claimed they have better ones in the future. Blue Beetle catches himself—there's no other word for it—staring at him.

            "Blue?" Nightwing calls.

            Blue Beetle snaps out of his trance-like state. "Uh, yes?"

            Nightwing seems suspicious, but he lets it slide. He's used to seeing Blue Beetle battle out his inner demons, so that's what he figures he was doing. Little did he know it concerned another demon who went by the name of Bart Allen."You're leading Alpha." He repeats.

            _WHAT?_ is what he thought. "Sure thing." —Well, that's just what he says.

            _I'm leading Alpha and I don't even know the mission,_ He thinks.

            _This is the doing of the Impulse. I suggest we kill him now. He is an imminent distraction._

            The group disperses, and Blue Beetle makes good distance from them. "Ay dios mio, for the last time, no one's killing anyone." He says.

            Suddenly, someone jumps beside him. What perfect timing. "Whoareyoutalkingto?"

            Blue Beetle stumbles backwards slightly in surprise. Impulse steps away from him, because he notes that he'd scared him. "Myself." He tells him. Biggest lie.

            Impulse walks with him. Talks too. A lot. Even when he does something as little as talk, his superspeed still kicks in. "Sure, okay, whatever. Say, Blue. You're Alpha's leader! That's reallyprettytotally _crash_ , and hey what great chance! I'm gonna be your teammate. Of course, we're almost _always_ in the same team, as if it was fate's calling, but what can I say? We're best her-ma-nos."

            _He's in perfect killing range. Let me take control._

Blue Beetle ignores the monotonous voice that keep resonating within the hallways of his mind. Instead, he nods and listens to Bart. (Tries to, anyway. It's hard to keep track of what he's saying if he says something like fifty words per second.)

 

\----

 

            Jaime's on his skateboard, swiftly dashing down the streets and dodging past several people with a turn of a wheel. In the oddest of moments, he starts thinking of Bart. What was he doing at the moment? Was he doing okay? Maybe he was on mission. Or asleep. Come to think of it, Jaime didn't know much of what Bart really did outside Mount Justice and other than the times he wasn't eating all of Jaime's Chicken Whizees and playing video games.

_Bart Allen occupies your thoughts once again. I am surprised you have not decided to eliminate him._

            Jaime rolls his eyes. Same old scarab, spewing violent stuff and hating on Bart. "I don't get why you dislike him over everyone else."

            _I do not dislike, Jaime Reyes. I differentiate who to trust and who not to._

"And I can't trust Bart?"

            _He is slowly changing you. He is possibly attempting to manipulate you. By not killing him, you are letting him manipulate you._

The teen scoffs. "Changing me? Damn, hermano, you're paranoid."

            _It is true. Whenever Bart Allen is around you, you do the following: stutter and say the wrong words, increase temperature, fall into clumsy antics, have a faster heartbeat, lose focus. I have more proof, but these should suffice._

Jaime laughs. "You're talking about me as if I'm in love with Bart."

            The scarab doesn't say anything after, thank god. But neither does Jaime. In the most awkward and rarest of silences, it starts to sink in. "... _In love with Bart_..." He repeats it slowly, tentatively, like he was making sure he'd said it for real. That he was thinking properly. The realization begins to settle.

            _Love,_ the scarab says it like how it usually does when it was searching for answers. The flat voice speaks out again, _1.) a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties._

"That sounds, uh, reasonable." Jaime agrees.

            _2.) a warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion,_

            "I guess."

 _3.) attraction based on sexual desire; affection and tenderness felt by lovers_ _—_

            The skateboard skids roughly on the pavement as Jaime stops it in a sudden motion. He raises his hands and waves them around comically, in sheer embarrassment. "Okay, that's enough! I get the point. I know what love means. Geez."

            _If you feel 'love' for Bart Allen, wouldn't it be most logical to tell him? Other than that, I suggest we push through with killing._

"Agh, shut up." He says, feeling a blush spread down his neck. He hangs his head low as pushes the glass doors of a convenience store open. He had originally come because he'd run out of Chicken Whizees.

            And why might that be?

 

\----

 

 

 

            Now, he notices things more. Not like he hadn't noticed stuff about Bart before, but now, he seems far more—what's the word?—observant, maybe? He begins to notice how Bart's green eyes look like they light up—twinkle, even—when he feels elated about something. Like they weren't bright enough to begin with. Like they had to go even brighter, just to enrapture Jaime even further.

            When Bart borrows Jaime's shirts—the ones that are too big for him and hang loosely on his shoulders—he sometimes can see the light freckles scatter from his neck, to his shoulders, and down his back. Jaime chastises himself for even looking, so he tries not to look at it all that often; Bart looks like he kind of gets suspicious.

            He notices his little habits too. Like how when Bart's miffed, he starts to speak a tad slower. When he becomes evidently worried, he bites his lower lip.

            It's gotten out of hand, Jaime thinks, how his world suddenly started to revolve around Bart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 -----

 

 

            He's not sure how it's possible to keep going like this forever; how he could keep it a secret forever. On normal days, it just threatens to slip out. (With the help of a certain scarab, that is.)

 

 

            _You must tell him. It is the only reasonable thing to do in this situation._

"You're a suit-weapon-alien-bug-thing, what do you know about the reasonable things to do in a situation like mine?" Jaime whispers.

            "What's that?" asks Bart, who is currently seated on the carpeted floor next to him. He doesn't look at Jaime though, fortunately, because he's too absorbed in playing the video game. He'd been so determined to beat Jaime's high score.

            "No, I didn't say anything." Jaime says out loud, then thinks to the scarab. _Love doesn't always work two-way, got it?_

_What do you mean? When you feel 'love', should you not receive it back?_

Jaime eyes Bart warily. "Not always."

            But the thing was that Jaime felt tired, and defeated. He thinks he should just give in to the scarab's dumb 'suggestion'. It was all so exhausting—this 'love' business. He can't keep up.

            _Fine. Whatever. It's worth a shot._ "Bart?"

            The younger presses a button on the console to pause the video game, then he turns to his companion. "What's up? Everything crash?"

            Jaime laughs nervously. "Just crash. Perfectly crash. Uh, listen," He peers at the door, checking if it was still nicely closed. His little sister and his mother _couldn't_ , at any cost, hear this conversation right now.

 

            "I think I love you?"

 

            He'd wanted to state it properly, but he was too unsure and confused about the whole thing, that it comes out sounding like a question instead. His manner of saying it actually makes himself flinch a little.

            Bart blinks once. Twice.

            _Bart Allen displays confusion._

Jaime releases a miniscule sigh. _Yeah, I can see that._

            "For real?" Bart questions, and the other nods slowly, almost even shyly. Bart hums in thought. Then, he begins to talk again. "Oh wow, I'm an idiot."

            _Preparing sonic gun for possible rejection._

            The gun pops out in one harsh, sudden movement on Jaime's arm. He feels his arm being jolted around against his will to aim at Bart and _no_ , oh god, he can't let that happen. Panicking, he hides the gun from Bart's line of sight and forces it to deactivate behind his back.

            "Here I was, thinking that you've been acting really weird lately because you were feeling the  _mode_ and because you'd started to hate me or something," Bart explains, something reminiscent of a smile forming on his face. Jaime is thankful for that small smile, but he can't bare to look at it. "When in reality, you just loved me back."

            Jaime scratches the back of his neck, keeping his eyes on the floor like it was the most interesting thing ever. (It's just that he _refuses_ to look Bart in the eye.) "Ah, yeah, I guess—wait, did you just say ' _loved me back_ '?"

            "Yeah. Do I talk too fast?"

            Jaime feels inexplicable joy start to surge through him. "Yes—No! Well, okay, _sometimes_ , but that's not the point. The point is... Wow."

            Bart places both of his smaller hands on top of Jaime's, and he starts to crawl--almost like a kitten, Jaime thinks--towards Jaime. He's a painful inch away from Jaime's face; nose-to-nose."' _Wow'_? This is a surprise to you? Can't believe you can be _that slow,_ Blue _._ "

            _He is insulting you. Put me in control. He shall be terminated._

"Shut up." Jaime accidentally says aloud.

 

            The edges of Bart's mouth quirk upward. " _Make me._ "

 

 

\-----

 

 

            For the first time ever, Jaime is able to drown out the scarab's voice. He doesn't hear it as he gently pushes Bart down, until Bart's arching back meets the floor. He doesn't hear it when he spends a short moment hovering above Bart, brown eyes meeting green. He doesn't hear it as he tilts his head to an angle so he can properly kiss Bart, and the voice is _absolutely_ muted when Bart starts to kiss back. He doesn't even hear it when the younger winds his arms around his neck and brushes his hand through Jaime's black hair, pulling him closer.

            As their lips fit together and move together, all Jaime hears is Bart's breathing and heartbeats.

           

_The Bart Allen situation has been successfully taken care of._

 

           

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
